Russia and Ukraine have agreed to return a total of nine children to their families through mediation by Qatar, according to Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, Reuters reports.
Citing the Lvova-Belova, a criminal wanted by the ICC, Reuters says the exchange involves six Ukrainian boys and one girl, aged six to 16, being returned to relatives in Ukraine, and two allegedly Russian boys, aged seven and nine, returning to their families. How the alleged Russian children ended up in Ukraine, the Putin’s commissioner didn’t specify.
Lvova-Belova claimed that “most” of those abducted Ukrainian children “lived in Russia with close relatives, mainly with their grandmothers,” while one 16-year-old boy, who had been in the Oleshky orphanage and left without parental care since birth, will now be with his brother. Another 12-year-old boy whose parents were divorced and whose mother allegedly died this year will now go to his father in Ukraine, according to Lvova-Belova.
Russia abducted children not only from incomplete or financially vulnerable families, but also from multiple foster homes and orphanages in the occupied Ukrainian territory. The Russians forcibly deported those to Russia, with their identities often altered to hinder their eventual return home.
The Qatari-mediated exchange transfers two Ukrainian children to Russia, a nine-year-old boy to his father after his mother’s death and a seven-year-old to his mother after living in Ukraine with his father and grandmother, according to the ICC-wanted criminal.
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